


the doppler effect

by chileancarmenere



Category: Mass Effect
Genre: F/F, close but not quite canon, vaguely sciencey
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-07-03
Updated: 2014-07-03
Packaged: 2018-02-07 07:00:31
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,284
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1889358
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/chileancarmenere/pseuds/chileancarmenere
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>one of you is always leaving.</p>
            </blockquote>





	the doppler effect

Doppler effect: the phenomenon of light emitted from an approaching source shifting into shorter wavelengths, making it appear blue; and light emitted from a receding source shifting into longer wavelengths, making it appear red

 

Asari are blue; sometimes with purple overtones, sometimes (very rarely – Shiala) they are green. Sometimes they have paler markings on their faces, their shoulders. Liara does not – she is true blue. Asari are blue, but your asari should by rights be red, because she is always leaving, moving away from you.

The first time, technically, you leave. The first time, it isn’t premeditated, it isn’t one of you looking into the other’s eyes and promising pretty, empty lies. It’s violence and flashing red lights and pain as you glare at her and bark orders, biting down the scream inside your throat. _I’m scared Liara please just get out._ You’ve seen ships destroyed before; you’ve lived your entire life in space. You’ve seen corpses retrieved from cold dark space before, scarred beyond recognition from the frozen airlessness. As Liara goes still and silent at your voice, as Joker protests when you drag him from his chair, as he yells _Shepard!_ with panic in his voice when the chain of command breaks down and the Normandy disintegrates around you, you think of Benezia crumpling against the rachni queen’s cage. _No light? They always said there would be a light…_

There is a light for you, a cold, medical white light. Your heart accelerates and you’re screaming _Liara_ between lips that won’t work when you realize there’s only light because you’re not dead.

The second time you let yourself hope that she won’t leave. Her eyes are cold hard sapphires as you fight your way through the Shadow Broker’s ship, and you think _God forgive me_ because you know where she learnt that hardness from, and it wasn’t her archaeological digs, God forgive you it was you.

But she softens again when you take her in your arms and you kiss her, and even with a dead yahg next to you and lightning sparking all around and a thousand agents waiting for commands on the terminal, hell, it’s still sort of perfect.

When she comes to visit you on the Normandy, the Normandy that still cracks you in the knee or the elbow sometimes because your muscle memory is all off, you make sure you have her favorite Armali red already decanted on the table. She hands you your old tags, and your hands shake as you take them from her, because they belong to someone that Cerberus didn’t bring back, not the Alliance soldier. She asks you to promise, says _if we’re going to do this…I need to know you’re always coming back_ , and you promise because death didn’t stop you from coming back to her. You press your lips against her neck, moving slowly down, and she gasps, a sound you remember from a lifetime ago and you’ve heard in dreams ever since. She’s above you, taste and smell and sound all fitting perfectly into your memories as if you were a drell, and she weaves her fingers into your hair and holds you close. Her body shudders, her eyes fill with tears, and you kiss them away silently because it’s not your words she wants to hear now.

But she leaves. Slowly, unstoppably, she untangles herself from you as the sheets are cooling, she puts on her elegant gown, she puts her hands in yours and says _thank you for everything_ as though you were a waitress who’d just made sure she’d had a particularly pleasant evening. You want to scream at her, you want to fall into her arms and cry, _I can’t do this without you Liara please stay with me that damn ship can crash into Hagalaz for all I care just stay._ Instead, you watch her step into the elevator and the doors close before you can meet her eyes. Instead, you whisper come back soon to your empty room, uselessly, and you can’t sleep there tonight. She won’t come back.

The third time you leave destruction in your wake worse than the Citadel, worse than Sovereign. You’ve blown up a mass relay and a station at the heart of the galaxy and what a surprise, the bureaucrats are ready and waiting to tie you up with red tape. Preferably to hang you with it, if the batarians get their way. They don’t even let you go to Hagalaz first; the Normandy is tagged as soon as she limps back through the Omega 4 relay, and when they impound her you give Tali and Garrus a note from you to Liara and beg them to take it to her. They both promise, but with the Reapers coming, you know that the chances she’ll get it are slim. Garrus and Tali have to see to their own people first. You don’t blame them. You’d do the same.

There’s a scratch on your headboard for every day you’ve spent in your jail cell, every day you haven’t heard a word from her, every day you lose it a little bit more. When the Reapers come it’s almost a relief; the unbearable tension of the last six months finally snaps and you wish for biotics like Liara’s to trample down the husks in your way, to blast a path through the Reapers to get to your ship and to her. You make do with your assault rifle, your heart almost bursting with fury and joy at letting loose at last, _at last_ , you’re done with goodbyes. On Mars you see the blue shimmer as she flings a singularity at the Cerberus soldiers, hear the harsh hum of her biotics, and it’s music to your ears. Vega gives a low wolf-whistle when she yanks your head forwards into her kiss and you give him the finger. You ask how she got there but you hardly pay attention to her explanation because what does it matter how she got there as long as she did?

But as a soldier there is no being done with goodbyes, as a soldier they train you for nothing but goodbyes. It’s Earth and the rattle of gunfire and the klaxon blare of the Reapers are drowning out her words in your ears, and you’re completely, irrationally pissed off with the war because you can’t hear what she wants to say.

You tell Garrus to hold her back, you’re going to the beam alone, and he tells you to go to hell and you feed him his vitriol right back because you’re still the Commander here, goddammit. This is one time you’re leaving her and it’s what you want, it’s what feels right. _A million lives to stop the Reapers,_ you’d parroted that line, _a billion if that’s what it takes, my own if that’s what it takes,_ but God, not hers, never hers, turns out you’ve found your limit. Garrus is a bad turian but he’s not a terrible one, he knows when he’s heard an order and he’s obeying it, and you leave alone.

You’re feet from the beam, your heart in your throat and thudding so hard you feel you’ll choke with every step, when you hear _Shepard! Shepard!_ from behind you and you turn because you’d obey that voice through all the worlds. She’s running towards you, dodging the twisted chunks of metal thrown up by Harbinger, a true blueshifting asari at last, coming straight towards you. She cannons into you, throwing both of you into the beam and the brilliant white light like your rebirth and her voice, finally clear, echoing in your ears _Shepard I’m not leaving you now._


End file.
